1990: "Nancy Boy Cocaine Whore Blues", Cows

If ever there were a genre that made either introduction or explanation pointless, enter noise rock:

1990: "Whitlam Square", Died Pretty

Died Pretty were another long standing Aussie band that began in the mid-80s and have never broken up, but their relatively conventional roots rock sound never really distinguished the band from countless others plying the same trade a quarter century ago, so to this day they remain a pleasant diversion and nothing more, certainly mix tape worthy but you definitely wouldn't want to queue up multiple full length albums back-to-back or anything.

1990: "Cool Fire", Beasts of Bourbon

Man, at this point I'm actually much further ahead on the listening curve then I am in actually posting worthy singles, so apologies in advance if these next few are fairly sparse on the background material. While playing catch up I'll try to limit myself to stuff that maybe didn't warrant a novel's worth of explanatory captioning to begin with.

This first one is by Beasts of Bourbon, one of the many 80s bands from Australia still keeping the faith. For those of you unfamiliar with any Oz bands aside from INXS and AC/DC, the 80s in Australia was largely dominated by the twin strains of garage rock and an obsession with rural Americana, the latter usually twisted into some sort of gothic folk in the vein of Nick Cave. BoB pretty much dabbled in both of these things.

1990: ALBUM SPOTLIGHT: "Violator", Depeche Mode

You can hate Depeche Mode altogether if you're just determined to do so, but if you hold the band in even the slightest regard - and you're not just trying to score hipster points by being contrary - you surely recognize their 1990 effort Violator as the peak of the band's artistic talents.

Such was the wealth of goodness surrounding this album's release and the attendant b-sides that we can afford to completely ignore the actual singles altogether. So in no particular order of greatness:

"Blue Dress"


"Waiting for the Night"


"Halo"


I didn't even know there was a promo video made for this song until just now, but I don't think I'm cheating by not considering this a "hit" single. Watch it now before WB swoops in with their caped attorneys and snuffs this clip for good, at which point I'll naturally have to replace it with one of those bullshit camera phone live vids.

"Clean"


"Dangerous" is one of the catchier and most well known of DM's b-sides, but frankly I have no problem with it not making the cut on the album. Whereas Violator was largely a step into new, artsier territory for the band, "Dangerous" sounded pretty retro by comparison.



DM may have been getting largely away from dance beats on their albums, but the singles often found them immersing themselves in the latest club sounds, which in 1990 meant full on techno.

"Kaleid [remix]"

1990: "Merry Go Round (live)", The Replacements [Paul Westerberg]

OK, if we go any further with industrial at this point I'm going to have to listened to Consolidated's empty sloganeering over skeletal, half assed beats, and I don't think I'm up for that this early in the week so let's opt for something with a little more warmth / charm, shall we?

I take it the Replacements need no introduction. At least I fucking hope not, since 1990's All Shook Down was their very last album, and easily their spottiest artistically, at least since they got over that early hardcore period that most fans try to pretend doesn't exist. Nonetheless, a handful of nuggets abound this late in the game, and frankly you'd better get used to inconsistency before you try to navigate Paul Westerberg's solo career.

I really wanted to do "My Little Problem" but couldn't find a Youtube clip and I'm publishing remote today, so maybe I'll make my own and circle back to the 'Mats in the future. Speaking of Westerberg, you're going to have to settle for a solo rendition of my alternate choice, "Merry Go Round", since Warner Brothers have a monopoly on the official video for the song and naturally that means the embedding is disabled. Bastard sons of a thousand whores!

1990: "Danger", X Marks the Pedwalk

Coming in at the harder, more abrasive end of the EBM sound a la Skinny Puppy, X Marks the Pedwalk lifted their seemingly nonsensical moniker from a Fritz Leiber story, which is about as far as we looked into it since WKMR are not SF fans (besides, they're German, what more do you need to know?). XMTP were the first signing to then new Zoth Ommog Records, which arguably was the greatest and most influential of the industrial labels in the 1990s, despite not surviving that decade. One could also make the case for Metropolis Records, but Cleopatra can kiss our low rent asses.

1990: "Money Is Not Our God", Killing Joke

Rebounding hard after a couple of uncharacteristically abysmal albums, Killing Joke hit it out of the park with Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions. "Money Is Not Our God" was probably the most political and anthemic song they would release until 1996's "Democracy". "Is your answer yes or no to these painful truths?"

1990: "Liebeslied", KMFDM

Naive was KMFDM's fourth album and their breakthrough. It was a late victim in the Sample Wars, having been taken off the market three years after release due to a belated copyright claim over the use of Carl Orff's "Oh Fortuna" in the song "Liebeslied". The album would eventually be completely overhauled and remixed - not just the offending "Liebeslied" - and re-released in 1994 as Naive/Hell to Go. In 2006, the album was reissued again with both the original + remixed version of all the extant tracks with the exception of "Liebeslied", which was included sans "Oh Fortuna" sample. Well, fuck that, here's the 1990 out-of-print original intact.

1990: "Get Down Make Love", Nine Inch Nails

Alright, Brits have gotten enough love recently. Time to move on to some industrial.

Nine Inch Nails didn't release an album in 1990 but the singles culled from Pretty Hate Machine were just tapering off, Sin being the last and historically the least successful. So I'm reaching to include this, as it's a mere b-side to the Sin CD single, but when Trent Reznor decides to cover Queen it's worth a look.

1990: SPOTLIGHT - Ride

For the most part, the objective here on WKMR is to cherry pick either the best or equally good but less well known tracks from a band's annual efforts in mixtape fashion... typically it's considered bad form and uncreative to stack a bunch of back-to-back songs from a band on a mixtape - even more so if they're from the same album or year - but in certain rare cases a band may be so prolific in a given era that they warrant a spotlight of their own.

Since we're trailing off on the first wave of shoegaze material from 1990, this seems an opportune time to inaugurate the Spotlight feature with the most prolific of those bands at the turn of the decade: Ride.

Like Swervedriver, Ride were from Oxford as well, sporting a neo-psych take on layered Britpop that differentiated them from the rest of their peers. They debuted in January 1990 with a self titled EP from which the following pair of songs is culled:





Both Ride and the subsequent Play EPs were repackaged for the US market as the Smile compilation. "Like a Daydream" is taken from the latter EP.



The following were present on all versions of Ride's debut long player, Nowhere. The 60's-style harmonies are noticeably offset by a decidedly post punk melodic sensibility.







And finally, these two were initially released on the Fall EP, which came out in September 1990, one month before the Nowhere album, and the entire Fall EP was appended to the CD release of the debut album. "Dreams Burn Down" in particular simultaneously looks back at the aching dream pop of Cocteau Twins while also anticipating the weighty ballast of 00s post-metal, as exemplified by Isis and many other bands on the Hydra Head roster.